At least 23 protesters were killed in Cairo last night, Sunday, as the army and police carried out a massacre in front of the state TV building.
Coptic Christians had been staging a peaceful march from the working class district of Shubra to Maspero, in downtown Cairo, to denounce sectarian attacks against churches.
The international media has reported there were “clashes”—but the truth is the authorities cracked down brutally using live ammunition, while army armoured vehicles ran over protesters in cold blood.
The army also stormed the offices of two TV stations, taking them off air, to try to stop the broadcast of the videos of the attacks.
Egyptian state TV has been inciting sectarian strife, alleging Christians were armed and that they attacked the army. It also called on the "public" to take to the streets to "protect" the army. Thugs, armed with sticks and knives, attacked protesters, responding to the sectarian calls.
But the protesters were not exclusively Christian as the media tried to depict it. Many Muslims joined the clashes, and fought against the army and police. At one point a Muslim cleric carried a cross over the 6 October Bridge, leading Coptic protesters in marching on Maspero
More text and video:
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Statement:
The Revolutionary Socialists send sincere condolences to the families of the peaceful demonstrators who were murdered by the bullets of the Central Security Forces and crushed by the military’s armoured cars after they came on the night of 9 October to defend the right of Coptic Christians to freedom and equality.
The police repression of the demonstrations is an extension of Mubarak’s policies, just as it is a continuation of the policies of oppression of the Copts which goes hand-in-hand with a policy of divide and rule between Christian and Muslim working people, while the bosses and the military from both sides enjoy the fruits of their hard labour. And at the same time as these events, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has announced new decisions which will assist the followers of the old regime in their takeover of parliament, in order to tighten their grip once again.
The goal of the counter-revolution led by the Supreme Council at this moment is to distract the masses in preparation for striking a blow at the revolution. The military’s crime is an expression of their fear, and the fear of their internal and external allies of developments in our continuing revolution.
Over the last three weeks more than half a million working people, Muslim and Christian have joined the struggle, in the historic strikes by teachers, public transport workers, doctors, irrigation ministry workers and others. Muslim and Christian have been on strike together, and they have joined the sit-ins together. Sometimes they have faced repression, at other times they have been victorious. Their struggle has provided the finest examples of how to erase the false divisions which our exploiters impose on us for their own benefit.
This coalescence between Muslims and Christians proves the interconnections between the struggle for social justice on one hand, side-by-side with our fight to defend full equality for the Copts and all the oppressed in this country.
Meanwhile Mubarak’s generals continue to use the blood of the workers and peasants who fell in battle during their past wars with Israel to glorify themselves and their role in history. The truth is that the policy of the Military Council is an extension of Mubarak’s policy of weakness and subservience to the Americans and the Zionists. The generals have not taken any position against the continued aggression of the Zionists against our brothers in Palestine, or even over their killing of Egyptian soldiers. The Military Council responded with silence, and with the crushing of demonstrations demanding the rights of the martyrs.The perpetrators of the massacre at Maspero are not only those who took part in the killing in person; soldiers and those the military and the Interior Ministry like to call “honest citizens”, the thugs which the Interior Ministry put into action and some of the reactionary religious forces which spout sectarian rhetoric and whose followers are themselves directly involved in the crimes of burning churches and incitement to tear down buildings in the name of religion. They did not commit the massacre of Maspero on their own. Their accomplices are all those who published ‘facts’ in order to mislead the masses, all those who justified the slaughter in cold blood, and all those who refused to see that these are crimes against humanity and not only crimes against the Copts.
We will continue to defend our revolution, and the people’s right to free expression, to protest, demonstrate and strike, in order to restore our stolen rights, and to cleanse the country of the roots of corruption, which is still poisoning our revolution and attempting to overturn it.
In defence of freedom of expression, we declare our condemnation of the attack by the Military Council on the 25 January and Al-Hurra TV stations because they were broadcasting the massacres committed by the army and police that night.
While we know that it will probably not wipe away the tears or quench the burning loss of a son or loved one last night, we swear to continue the struggle for the success of the revolution, so that our country can become a nation of equality, freedom and justice.
The Revolutionary Socialists
4am, 10 October 2011
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=26308
